Breathe
by DalstinKyukiMikileyluv
Summary: Fred Weasley is dead and George hasn't come out of his room for a month. He can't, he WON'T cope. (I can't breaathe without you but I have to)


**AN: For Little League Quidditch, as Slytherin Chaser One, I have done prompts **2,7,8,14, and 15.

-George-

My knees are as close to my face as I can bring them while I lay my head on my pillow and cry in the large bed that we share. That we _used_ to share. I'm so careful not to touch his side, not to muddy the scent of Fred: dungbombs and peppermints and the soft cinnamon smell of his shampoo. Not to erase the memories.

"_George, will you please. get. off?" Fred groans._

_I actively ignore him and refuse to move my legs from his back since he has stolen most of the covers._

"_George!" Fred laughs._

_I try to tug them back over my shoulder, but he digs his arms into the bed to hold it down, his will a force to be reckoned with. I lay my head on his chest and sigh._

"_Freddy, I'm cold, I'm tired, and I've had a bad day. Let. GO." I say. _

_It had been a long day, to say the very least, and being cold and frustrated wasn't helping in the slightest._

"_No, because if I do, you won't tell me what's been bothering you," he says_

_He knows me so well. I've always known,, deep in my soul, that it was us against the world. That I would always have a friend in Fred. I was utterly intertwined within him, my true self had never been more lost or more free. And I didn't mind one bit._

"_You're my best mate, silly little thing, and you aren't going to bed upset," Fred whispers as he gives in anyway and pulls me to himself._

The indentation of his head in the pillow next to mine has almost faded and the soft, sweet, cinnamon scent of Fred's shampoo is long gone because I ruined it with the salty, empty scent of grief. Every breath feels like pain and emptiness. Every single day is torture because in my dreams I forget, just for a moment and then it hits me again and again, eternally ripping my soul in two. Eternally turning two into one. I cradle on of the many sweaters with his initial on it and pretend that I'm pulling him towards me.

I can't leave this room. I can _**not**_ hear the sound of my family accepting his death and moving on. I hate them for moving on, and I envy them for the ability to do it. Everyone else is coping. I cannot cope. I will not cope. Coping means forgetting, in its own way. Instead, I will stay here as I have done for a month and listen to my one sided conversations while pretending that he's talking back to me.

I'm nothing without him. I twine my fingers through my hair and wince as I'm hit with a memory.

_Fred laughs hysterically as I shout, "Fred! My beautiful hair! My scalp, oh, my scalp."_

"_You're worse than Lee," he laughs._

_I try again in vain to separate myself from him. His hand is stuck fast to my head after we tested out a prank hair gel, and it __**hurts.**_ _Badly._

"_Let go," I say._

"_It's a success, George. It works. Calm down, we'll make millions!" Fred smiles._

_I laugh a little. I suppose it is amusing, and were it anyone else, I would be in hysterics too. _

"_I can't wait to use it on Snape. Or Malfoy. Those slimy gits use so much hair product, we could probably slip it in among their other things without them noticing," I say._

_And then suddenly we stop trying to free ourselves and start panicking as we realize we'll have to tell Mum how this happened so that she can set us free._

I yank my hands from my hair and look down at them. I look at the little scar on my thumb and I think of Fred. A Puking Pastille just under the drawer makes me think of him too.

I haven't really been doing anything else lately.

Ginny was the last one to stop knocking on my door, and that was about a week ago. It's hard to keep track of the days when all you do is cry and sleep and occasionally eat a sandwich or two left outside of your door. Ginny was always Fred's second favorite.

But I can't force myself to get up and see all the things they forgot to put away and the things they didn't know would remind me of him. The things that belonged to both of us. The things they couldn't do anything about, like the couch or the dinner table, or this house.

I can't even look in the mirror because I no longer see myself. I no longer want to be myself. I have always been part of a pair. Gred and Forge against the world, forever and always. Partners in crime. Best friends, only seconded by Lee. He's been a good friend lately. The only one I will allow to send me owls. My only communication with the outside world.

"You are not alone," they all say, "We miss him too."

But they **don't** will never miss him the way I miss him, need him the way I do. I am alone. I am alone because he left me here by myself and didn't even come back as a ghost and I am alone.

We were an **us**. I hate the pronoun 'I'. We've almost never been apart. Each day that I wake up in this bed alone, still breathing air from the ungrateful Earth that couldn't even give me my brother as return for saving it, is a new highscore for "days I have not died without Fred." Every day the forgetting breaks my heart again. I have to wake up each and every single bloody day alone. It is the second most terrible thing because every night I convince myself that it was only a nightmare.

I do feel his presence sometimes. In my dreams, it's as he never left. He always tells me that I am not alone, that he loves me, and that I should talk to Harry. It has been one long day of waking and crying, staring listlessly at walls, and sleeping. I roll my knees in closer and close my eyes. The necklace I made from Fred's hand off the family clock when it broke off bites into my skin, but I relish the feeling of anything at all and sleep.

Lovely, lovely dreams.


End file.
